Mid Main project will ride with the millennials

Development seeking the 18-to-32 generation with Midtown rail stop, apartments and retail

By David Kaplan

September 28, 2013Updated: September 28, 2013 11:53pm

Photo: Johnny Hanson, Staff

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Mid Main, near the Ensemble/Houston Community College rail stop, will include apartments, shops and restaurants. Next door will be an arts and theater center.

Mid Main, near the Ensemble/Houston Community College rail stop, will include apartments, shops and restaurants. Next door will be an arts and theater center.

Photo: Johnny Hanson, Staff

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This rendering shows part of Mid Main along Main Street's light rail line. It will be a place where people can live and play and get to work by foot, rail, bike or car.

This rendering shows part of Mid Main along Main Street's light rail line. It will be a place where people can live and play and get to work by foot, rail, bike or car.

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Rendering of the mixed-use residential project Mid Main which is along Main Street's light rail at the 3500 and 3600 blocks of Main.

Rendering of the mixed-use residential project Mid Main which is along Main Street's light rail at the 3500 and 3600 blocks of Main.

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The light rail train makes a stop next to where a mixed-use development will be built along the 3500 to 3600 block of Main Street Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013, in Houston. ( Johnny Hanson / Houston Chronicle )

The light rail train makes a stop next to where a mixed-use development will be built along the 3500 to 3600 block of Main Street Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013, in Houston. ( Johnny Hanson / Houston Chronicle )

Photo: Johnny Hanson, Staff

Mid Main project will ride with the millennials

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Since the light-rail line opened on Main Street nearly a decade ago, civic leaders have pushed the idea of transit-oriented mixed-use projects - places near rail stops where people can live and play and get to work by foot, rail, bike or car.

That sounds a lot like Mid Main, a development about to get underway west of the Ensemble/Houston Community College rail stop. The project will include apartments, shops, restaurants and a big parking garage.

Going up at the same time next door will be the nonprofit Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston. Construction on both projects starts early next year.

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"We bought the property in 2008, two weeks before the economy collapsed," managing partner Bob Schultz said. "We were very worried."

For years, he said, he and his partners clung to their plan while staying in "survival mode." Once the economy rebounded, so did the project planned for the 3500 and 3600 blocks of Main.

Proponents of transit-oriented mixed-use residential developments are enthusiastic. David Crossley, president of Houston Tomorrow, a local quality-of-life advocacy group, called Mid Main "the one we've all been waiting for." He predicted more transit-oriented mixed-use developments will follow.

"Back in the day, they couldn't get anybody to do" such a project in Midtown, Crossley said. "Nobody wanted to be the first, except for Bob."

A look at the future?

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The Mid Main development will "give a taste of where Houston is headed" in its urban core, said Ed Wulfe, a retail broker/developer and chairman of the Main Street Coalition.

"We thought it would come sooner," he said, "but real estate prices escalated after rail came in and then the economy collapsed, and it took 10 years to get out of that."

Schultz and his partners have even bigger ideas for the area. On surrounding property they either own or will lease they plan, eventually, to add a boutique hotel, an office tower and more entertainment venues.

More immediately, a 363-unit apartment complex called The Lofts of Mid Main and 30,000 square feet of retail and construction are expected to be completed in mid- to late 2015.

Mid Main will also have a shared paid parking garage for 773 vehicles to be used by residents, retail users, attendees of the adjacent arts and theater center, and others.

Mid Main is designed to appeal to young professionals, Schultz said, noting that more than half of the apartments will be studios.

Drawing millennials

Maureen McAvey, senior director of retail and mixed-use development at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., and whose expertise is the retail preferences of millennials, believes the project will appeal to people 18 to 32.

Many members this generation don't mind small living spaces, she said.

"They think of the city as their living room."

And they like using light rail, bicycle and using shared Zip cars as well as having their own vehicles, she said. A couple might share one car.

Mid Main "will have the vibrancy and urbanity that they love," she said, "but you have to manage it aggressively and effectively. It's all in the execution."

For example, she said, will there be enough parking? Did developers manage the loading docks so that restaurant deliveries don't interfere with residents moving in?

Millennials are active, she said, and the residential project might include storage lockers for bikes, kayaks and so on.

Schultz said his team gave "exhaustive thought" to issues involved in sharing retail and residential space and in generational preferences. There will be storage lockers and other facilities for recreational equipment, he said, and a lot of bike parking space.

He declined to give the cost of the project.

Gensler is Mid Main's lead architect. Rogers Partners of New York and Will Cannady, a Rice University architecture professor and a Mid Main partner, are also on the design team.

The parking equation

Parking has been a challenge for inner-city mixed-use developments, and the shared parking garage will address that issue, Wulfe said.

Less than the normal amount of parking will be required by the city, because it is at a light-rail stop and be used by multiple parties who won't have to park at the same time, said Andy Icken, the city of Houston's chief development officer.

Schultz and his partners have had a stake in the Midtown area since 1999, when they bought part of the 3700 block of Main near Alabama and opened the Continental Club. That block also houses Tacos A Go-Go, as well as restaurants on the property Schultz's group does not own, such as the Breakfast Klub and Sparrow.

In 2008, his group RHS Interests bought the 3500 and 3600 blocks of Main from the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Local entrepreneurs

After the economy crashed in 2008, the group put the bulk of the Mid Main project on hold while bringing in retailers to the 3600 block, including Sig's Lagoon music store, My Flaming Heart boutique, Double Trouble coffeehouse, Natachee's restaurant and Big Kat's barbershop.

He plans to maintain those retailers in the decades-old buildings that house them. The new Mid Main structures will wrap around existing buildings, he said.

Crossley said Schultz deviated from the standard practice of catering to national chain stores.

"His commitment to local entrepreneurs is huge," Crossley said. "It's a big development with all the right attitude."

Off-Broadway?

Icken said he views the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston, Mid Main and its surrounding restaurants and entertainment venues, as "a complement to our convention and entertainment business."

He said he sees the arts and theater center's four-theater complex and the Ensemble Theatre across the street becoming Houston's version of Off-Broadway.

The city has a "380 agreement" with Mid Main and the nonprofit arts and theater center, he said. In such an agreement, a private developer invests in public infrastructure, such as a shared parking garage or road, and is reimbursed in future tax payments, Icken said. The city has done 17 such 380 agreements, he said.

Plans for the area

Schultz and his partners have other plans for the Midtown area. They are in the process of acquiring the ground lease from Trinity Church for the property at Holman and Main between the church and Ensemble Theatre, he said, and hope to build an office tower.

The group also owns most of the 3600 block of Main east of the light-rail line and hopes to lure a boutique hotel or develop retail and entertainment venues, he said. Schultz predicted those pro-jects should materialize "fairly quickly, based on the amount of interest in them now."

Schultz said he plans to preserve an existing building at 3617 Main because it once housed the original Alley Theatre and has historical value.